Should Iran be allowed to Have Nuclear Weapons?

The Middle East is a powder keg. Tensions between Israel, America and Iran seem to be escalating and it’s very hard to separate the propaganda from the truth. On one hand you have Iran who has perpetually screwed around UN nuclear inspectors, while maintaining that their enrichment program is for power and medical purposes only. However, that is likely a lie. If it were the truth, there would be no reason for Iran to hide its activities and play ring-around-the-rosy with nuclear inspectors.

On the other hand you have Israel who has said on numerous occasions that they will use military force if they think Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb. You also have a lot of tension over the Palestinian situation and illegal settlements being built on the West Bank.

This week Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, "Amazingly, some people refuse to acknowledge that Iran's goal is to develop nuclear weapons.....This duck is a nuclear duck and it's time the world started calling a duck a duck”.

I agree. However, it’s fair to point out that Israel has been a nuclear duck a long time, even if they haven’t publicly acknowledged it. Israel’s ally, America, is the biggest freaking nuclear duck on the planet. Israel has also refused to sign the non-nuclear proliferation agreement. If I’m an Iranian, I might want to have a few nuclear devices as well to act as a deterrent.

I also don’t trust American or even Canadian news sources when it comes to Iran. We saw how American news sources and intelligence agencies totally screwed up when it came to Iraq. That war cost billions of dollars and countless human lives. Some estimates say that more than one hundred thousand Iraqi’s were killed in that war. Yet, we never saw any weapons of mass destruction. We did get to see Saddam Hussein being dragged from a dirt hole though.

Yesterday the Sun printed an article called, United front needed to stop Iran nukes. It’s that article that spurred me to write this one. The article is basically advocating that Canada back Israel if they decide to strike Iran. Here’s a clip:

In recent days, both our prime minister and the president of the United States let Israel down by not guaranteeing their support of the Jewish state should Iran continue developing nuclear weapons.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is now even more convinced Iran has such a program, and its recent “election” has clarified who controls Tehran.

It is Khamenei and his ultraconservative mullahs, all hell-bent on exterminating Israel.

At the end of the article it says that Iran should be given a hard deadline to submit to UN inspection and if it doesn’t comply, ‘Iran should brace for impact as Canada, the U.S. and NATO use tactical force to take out their 30-plus nuclear facilities’.

Now, I’m not a fan of Iran. I think it’s a hell hole. There are few places on earth I would less like to live. I think they treat women as subhuman and I think they’ve screwed around, stalled and basically made a farce of every UN resolution to try to halt their enrichment of uranium. But do we have the right to dictate whether another country has the right to create a nuclear device when we ourselves are plush with them?

The biggest question is whether Iran really wants a nuclear device to use as a deterrent or whether they want one to hit Israel.

Ordinary mortals can't know where those red lines lie; when the "weaponization" of Iran's nuclear material might be imminent; even what Iran's real intentions are. Experts and policy-makers differ about the time Iran would need to develop a nuclear weapon, the space for diplomacy, whether Iran wants a nuclear weapon as an instrument of deterrence or would use it pre-emptively. Or even whether it really is hell-bent on acquiring one.

James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in January that Iran was "keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons...We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually build nuclear weapons."

It seems we know less than what we know. I also don’t trust the American military complex. It seems that they always need a target to justify their obscene military spending. If they can keep the public scared, they don’t have to justify how much money they’re dumping into the military.

It also seems as though China and Russia are even beginning to distance themselves from Iran. On Thursday the six world powers released a statement asking that Iran restart the negotiation process:

In a joint statement, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany signaled a unified resolve in their renewed negotiations with Iran, which were suspended in frustration more than a year ago. The six agreed this week to Iran’s request to restart negotiations.

Their statement also sent a message of impatience with any possible Iranian attempts to prolong or stall negotiations over the nuclear program. Iran says its program is for purely peaceful purposes, while the West suspects that it is a cover to develop the ability to make nuclear weapons. The dispute has resulted in unprecedented Western economic sanctions on Iran, has raised global oil prices and has stirred fears of a new military conflict in the Middle East if the negotiations fail.

So as you can see, the whole thing is one big mess. It’s hard to tell who is telling the truth and who is lying or has a hidden agenda. If I had my way, I’d like it if every country decided to dismantle their nuclear weapons. I don’t want to see another war in the Middle East but I fear it’s coming and very little will stop it. I doubt Obama will commit to any war with Iran until after the election (provided he wins) but the drums of war are being beat nonetheless.

So do you think Iran has the right to continue with its nuclear program unmolested even if that means a nuclear Iran in the future?